Arch Linux

You need to fix all scriptlets from all packages and remove the three stupid useless lines at the end.

I think the problem is that pacman runs install scripts by sh instead of explicitely use bash.

Scriptlets should be /bin/sh compatible, but they are not. Arch is not guaranteed to work with /bin/sh linked to dash (yet).

You are welcome to submit patches or bug reports for packages which fail under dash, however

Here is the patches for core and extra repos. I am not able to test all of them though.

Ramil : how did you create these patches? was it entirely automated?
they are probably outdated by now

It was partially automated. Here are scripts I used.

Xavier, I started to isolate broken packages on my installation, first listing packages containing an install script.

I got the same error than this bug report mentions directly in the first one (autoconf). The fact is that 2 kinds of errors occur :
* using array variables, almost for info filelists (this can be easily modified to a portable syntax manually (see commented lines below) :

#filelist=(first.info second.info)
filelist='first.info second.info'

post_install() {
#for file in ${filelist[@]}; do
for file in $filelist; do # or with braces : ${filelist}
...
}

pre_remove() {
#for file in ${filelist[@]}; do
for file in $filelist; do
...
}

* using the shift instruction alone on its line when no argument is specified by pacman : $# -lt 1 - if any argumnt, this could be changed in

if [ $# -gt 0 ]; then
op=$1
shift
$op "$@" # note the "$@" instead of $*, which is a better practice (better management of quoting)
fi

this's more verbose, but the action is still their, and ok if arguments are specified or not to the script

I can try to make a script to do the two mentionned transformations (if all the repos can be checked and modified with that, it would be cool).
However, maybe their are other quirks, I did not tried all install scripts with dash -c ". /var/lib/pacman/local/package_name/install"

The shift junk can be completely removed - it is old and a hold-over. We don't do it that way anymore

grep "^shift$" $(find /var/abs -name *.install)

388 packages need fixed. So I suggest we start there. I will open separate bug reports for packages in core, extra and community (i.e. 3 bug reports).

Ramil, thanks a lot for all the info.

I completely overlooked there were so many scripts using arrays, for the info files, and that this was not compatible.

And even if someone commit all these changes, it would still need all packages to be rebuilt. Considering the number of affected packages, it will take ages.

So yeah, maybe pacman should just call /bin/bash :P

Allan: I haven't noticed those bug reports, can you link to them from here if they've been opened?

I also don't think pacman should call bash, sh *should* be fine... Do the packaging guidelines on the wiki mention not to use bashisms?

See 'Related Tasks'
Just now, I've removed the legacy lines from scripts in community.

Ahh, forgot that related ones are on a tab :)